Remember This Banger: Pedro Infante's 'Cien Aos' is out of this world

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Set us as preferred I still remember the moment when I heard “Cien Años” for the first time.I can vividly recall the haunting aftertaste, the glorious specificity of the experience.I had moved from Buenos Aires to Los Angeles, and somehow managed to make a living writing about Latin music.

I‘d seen Los Tigres del Norte in concert, shared a lengthy conversation with Vicente Fernández outside the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim, and spent months poring through the songbook of José Alfredo Jiménez.But listening to the 1953 recording of “Cien Años” by Mexican legend Pedro Infante was a game changer — an existential milestone that will stay with me for the rest of my life.I was in my home office, researching a story about the golden era of Mexican music.

“Cien Años” played on, the elusive contours of its melody floating in the afternoon air.Three minutes and 33 seconds later, when it ended, you could hear a pin drop.

I sat still for a few minutes, transfixed.Then I played it again.

And again.Ten, 15, 20 times in a row.A composition by Rubén Fuentes and Alberto Cervantes, the song wasn’t just another lilting ranchera from the 1950s — that much was clear.

On the contrary, it felt like an otherworldly manifestation from the gods above, as if a UFO had landed in the Mexican capital decades ago, and an advanced race of extraterrestrials left this artifact behind as some sort of exquisite offering — a reminder of everything that could be but wasn’t.There‘s the matter of that sinuous electric guitar intro, halfway between tropical psychedelia and merry-go-round anthem.Then, the main melody: forlorn, hallucinogenic.

Infante’s aristocratic delivery collides head on with the brutal indifference of the girl he will carry on loving for the rest of his embittered existence.His voice, so soft and fragile, coul...